


Faces

by brassmama, flipflop_diva



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Angst, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Podfic & Podficced Works, Post-Episode: s02e22 Nevertheless She Persisted, pod together 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-05 18:59:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11584164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brassmama/pseuds/brassmama, https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: Kara knew that face. And those eyes.Alternatively, Lena and Kara don't know what to do.





	Faces

[click here to download the MP3](http://brassmama.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/faces.mp3) (thank you paraka for hosting!)

 

It wasn’t getting any easier. Not that Kara would ever admit that to anyone.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she assured Alex, every time she asked, which was at least once a day, sometimes twice or three times.

“I’ve got plans,” she’d grin at Winn when he mentioned she could join him and Lyra for dinner.

“Hot story I’m working on,” she’d laugh when J’onn looked at her worriedly.

Because yes, she was completely fine. No, she wasn’t heartbroken. Yes, it sucked that Mon-El was gone and she would never see him again, but she was fine. Fine. Perfectly amazingly _fine_.

And she was a superhero. Who needed to train. A lot. And take on extra work. And save the world. And help repair damage from all the spaceships Rhea had launched on National City. That was a _lot_ of work after all. Someone had to help clean it up.

Which was why Kara, Supergirl rather, was here, out in the field with the other D.E.O. agents, pulling up rubble while trying her hardest to avoid other people. No one would hear the pep talks she had to give herself every hour of every day in order to keep herself from breaking down in tears or burying herself in her bed and not ever getting up again.

Because none of this was okay. And nothing was easy. And he wasn’t coming back. But nursing a broken heart was not who she was nor who she wanted to be, so she needed to be doing something, she needed to be pretending she wasn’t jealous of Alex or Winn or J’onn.

So Kara was going to pick up rubble left by the evil mother of the man she loved. She was going to feel him and remember him in every piece of twisted metal and speck of obliterated cement she touched, and when she was done — when _they_ were done — and the city was clean and the evidence removed, maybe then she, too, would be clean of the everlasting pain that was stored deep in her heart.

That was the plan, and dang it, she was going to make it happen.

•••

The plan worked for about a week. Because of course a plan to bury herself in work and superheroing just couldn’t go her way for longer than seven whole days.

She was out with the rest of the D.E.O., doing her best to keep her distance while she lifted huge chunks of metal and flew them back to warehouse that had been selected to house them until all the scientists, led by Winn, could properly inspect them.

She and the D.E.O. agents were removing the remnants of the main ship. Kara was trying to avoid looking at it, as much as was possible. Too many memories of a man she shouldn’t be thinking about if she wanted to keep her sanity.

But that, too, was not meant to be.

“Supergirl! Supergirl! Supergirl!” The shouts started with one agent, then a second, then a third. By the time Kara turned around, there was a whole group of them standing in a circle and calling frantically for her.

She made her way — walking, not flying — over to them. Before she’d even reached them, one agent broke through the crowd. There was something in her arms. A bundle of tangled blankets, or so it looked. Blankets letting out small hiccuping noises.

“We found this,” the female agent — _Simmons?_ Kara thought — dumped something in her arms.

She looked down. And nearly swayed on her feet.

Staring up at her were eyes she would have recognized anywhere, smaller and not as focused, but the little nose and the curve of the cheekbones. She knew this face.

She _knew_ this face.

But it was impossible. How was this possible?

Later on, she wouldn’t even remember flying to the temporary D.E.O. headquarters. She also wouldn’t remember practically running through the halls, her arms gripping the baby girl like she might suddenly fly away as fast as Mon-El had been forced to.

When she reached J’onn and Alex, Kara was crying, tears she didn’t remember forming streaming down her cheeks because _this couldn’t be_ and **it was impossible** and _why was this happening and how was it happening._ And the baby was crying now, from all the noise and the people and the suddenness of their movement. And Kara _didn't know what to do!_

"I don't know what to do. I don't know what to ..." Now, she did sway on her feet. But Alex was right there beside her, giving orders drowned out by the rushing in Kara's ears.

J'onn looked Kara in the face and said ... something? His hands reached out slowly as he talked words she couldn't comprehend. Gently, he took the baby and Alex took Kara's elbow, helping her sit on a nearby bench. Kara leaned her head against Alex’s shoulder as she _finally_ cried over everything she had lost. So caught up in her grief she didn’t even care if she was sitting in the middle of the D.E.O. for everyone to see.

Mon-El was gone. But maybe not all of him. How could this be?

•••

Tests on the baby were undertaken. Skin and hair, blood and X-rays.

“Well ... she’s definitely a baby,” Winn said, and Alex glared at his attempted humor and Kara flinched. _What else would she have been?_ she thought.

“Yeah, we got that much,” Alex said, rubbing Kara's arm in small, gentle circles.

“You never know,” Winn protested. “Around here, it’s totally likely it was a full-grown alien in disguise to kill you.”

He may have had a point, but Kara could only see her possible last connection to Mon-El.

“What else did you find out?” she asked instead.

At this, Winn looked down at the papers in his hand, finding an excuse to avoid looking at her. But she didn’t blame him. She wouldn’t want to have to tell herself this news either.

“We, um, analyzed samples of Mon-El’s DNA, uh, from his file, and compared the chromosonal... sorry, that part isn't-” Winn bit off his sentence before his techno babble could gain momentum. He took a deep breath, folded over his papers. “It’s a match. The baby is, genetically at least, Mon-El's daughter.”

Kara knew it would be, knew since she first looked at those eyes, but Winn’s words still hit her, bringing the turmoil inside barreling her toward the surface.

She leaned hard into Alex, needing her big sister more than she had in years.

“How is this even possible?” Alex asked.

“There’s more,” Winn said.

“There’s more than ‘Mon-El has a child’?” Alex squeezed Kara a little closer. 

Winn nodded. “The baby is half human."

This time there was stunned silence. Alex and Kara just stared at Winn, like he had told them the baby had suddenly sprouted two heads.

“What?” Alex said.

“We think it’s how the baby is still alive,” Winn said. “The human part of her is immune to the lead and is making it so the alien part of her physiology isn’t affected.”

“How, though,” Alex said, “would Mon-El have a half-human baby?”

“No idea,” Winn said. "How do Daxamites have kids, anyway?"

•••

It didn’t take as long — or as short — a time to get to the bottom of it as Kara had feared it would. It was a strange mix of feelings, wanting to know the truth but also terrified of what it may be. She'd spent more hours that she should have in the medical ward of the D.E.O., looking down at the baby in the makeshift crib, letting the baby hold her finger. Kara stroked the little girl's soft, dark hair, looked into her eyes and imagined, briefly, what the world could have looked like if Mon-El had been here and this baby was theirs.

But she wasn’t, and she had to belong to someone else; Kara wasn't human.

“Hair,” Winn said again, for about the thirtieth time in three minutes once they had determined the answer, as concluded from Winn’s research, J’onn’s secret D.E.O. files and the info spilled after threats of life-altering violence by Alex on a few patrons of the underground alien bar.

“ **Two** hairs." Winn twined his index fingers together. "And BOOM.” He pulled them apart and pointed toward the baby, also for the thirtieth time.

“That would be so much easier,” Alex sighed.

“So,” Kara clarified. “Rhea took these two hairs, did whatever Daxams do to create babies, and while the rest of the race was killed or sent packing, this little girl came into creation.”

“Basically,” Winn said.

“But it still doesn’t answer who she belongs to.” Alex looked at Kara worriedly.

“Yes, it does,” Kara said, because the answer was there in front of her, shining like a beacon. The only human Rhea would want to be the mother to her heir. The only human who spent a lot of time around Rhea, as far as they knew.

Lena Luthor.

“Yeah, so,” Winn said, after Kara explained her thoughts. “Who’s going to go congratulate the new mom on the birth of the baby she was never pregnant with?”

Alex and Winn both looked at Kara.

“Me!?” she practically squeaked.

“You are her BFF,” Alex said.

“Yup,” Winn said.

“Fine,” Kara said. “I’ll do it.”

Now she just had to figure out if she did it as Kara — or as Supergirl.

•••

In the end, Kara went as herself ... her more costumed self. 

Kara found Lena in the midst of the same work Kara had buried herself in this past week. Lena looked both exactly where she belonged, directing efforts to clean up a street using L Corp equipment and personnel, and a little absurd with her once bright yellow hard hat over top a messy bun. Supergirl dropped down a few yards away from where Lena was conversing over some sort of building plans. She looked up at the WHOOSH, and made a hurry up motion to the foreman beside her. The other woman glanced back, visible straightened her back, and finished whatever she had to say.

"We'll need to re-distribute some of our energy to accessing the water mains later today, but for now continue our current focus. Let me know if you need anything else." Lena nodded a dismissal and turned toward Supergirl. She frowned. "Hello, Supergirl. Not that it's terrible to see you, but ... why are you here?"

Kara waited until the foreman was out of earshot and then began. "The D.E.O. has been working to clear the debris from alien ships. They've started pulling apart the mother ship and we... we found something. We found a ..." Kara puffed out her cheeks. _Why was "We found Mon-El and your baby" so hard to say?_

Kara took a deep breath. She glanced around, wishing she had thought through what she could say, wishing this were a more ... intimate setting for what was going to be shocking news. She wished she could tell Lena this news as Kara and Supergirl.

"When you and Mon-El were on the ship, Rhea wanted an heir. We found that she took steps, before the end, to make sure she got what she wanted." 

Lena stared, her face flashing from shock to confusion to something akin to anger. "What do you mean? What did you-" She went pale, not wanting to believe what she knew Supergirl was surely about to say.

Kara reached out, gripping Lena's forearms. "We found a baby in the wreckage. We don't know how she survived the crash, but the D.E.O. did tests and she's Mon-El's."

"She?" Lena reached behind her, gripping hold of the closest thing she could find. Kara saw her eyes scanning around, probably searching for a chair.

"But.. why... You're telling me this because-" Lena stopped, made a sudden harsh noise. Not a sob or a laugh, just a sudden shocked exhalation.

"She's half human,” Kara said, when Lena had regained her composure. “And they don't have a way to test for sure, but it's pretty clear to us that you're her-" she paused, stumbling over the words a little, "her mother."

Lena slumped a bit, sitting fully on the object behind her. Which ... wasn't the most forethought action, as it was really just a big piece of plywood atop two sawhorses. Her weight tilted the table, sending Lena, and all the other objects on it, falling toward the floor ... or rather right into Supergirl, who had moved to catch Lena, shifting her grip from forearms to Lena's shoulders.

Kara, guiding the other woman to a closed crate, cursed herself again for not being more gentle. She kept seeing her errors after she had no way to stop them. She moved a crate closer, and sat across from Lena, both of them processing this information. They sat in silence for a long few minutes.

Lena, whose eyes had begun welling up at some point, wiped at her face with the inside of the overalls she wore. Suddenly, Kara realized she wasn't wearing make up, making her seem so much more innocent — and so much more beautiful — than Kara had ever seen her

Kara shook her head at herself as Lena finished wiping her eyes and looked up directly at Kara. "I want to see her."

"Of course, we can go right now." Kara stood, shaking her cape out.

"No. I need to..." Lena forced herself to stand, looking at the mess that had been dumped off the table when it tilted. "I need my phone and to make sure someone can handle this until I come back." She bent over, putting some papers on her crate-chair, and finding her phone mixed among them. "I can't just disappear."

Kara nodded. Lena hadn't meant it as anything other than a pause, but it felt, to Kara, that she once again couldn't do anything right. "That makes sense. I'll be right over here when you're ready."

She moved back to where she had landed and Supergirl waited.


End file.
